Love and Death
original film poster
Directed by	Woody Allen
Produced by	Charles H. Joffe
Written by	Woody Allen Mildred Cram & Donald Ogden Stewart (uncredited)
Starring	Woody Allen Diane Keaton Jessica Harper Olga Georges-Picot James Tolkan Denise Peron Harold Gould Howard Vernon
Cinematography	Ghislain Cloquet
Editing by	Ron Kalish Ralph Rosenblum George Hively
Distributed by	United Artists
Release date(s)	1975, Berlin International Film Festival
Running time	85 min.
Language	English
IMDb profile

Love and Death is a 1975 comedy by Woody Allen. Starring Woody Allen and Diane Keaton, Love and Death is a satirical take on Russian epic novels. Coming in between Sleeper and Annie Hall, Love and Death is in many respects an artistic transition between the two. It is the last of Allen's movies that tries to get as many laughs as possible, but despite this it contains a lot of commentary on philosophy and this balance is possibly why Allen considers it one of his best and most personal films. Keaton and Allen, as Sonja and Boris, Russians living during the Napoleonic Era, engage in mock-serious philosophical debates. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Woody Allen (born Allen Stewart Königsberg on December 1, 1935) is a three-time Academy Award-winning American film director, writer, actor, jazz musician, comedian, and playwright. ... Charles H Joffe is an American film producer. ... Woody Allen (born Allen Stewart Königsberg on December 1, 1935) is a three-time Academy Award-winning American film director, writer, actor, jazz musician, comedian, and playwright. ... Donald Ogden Stewart (1894-1980) an American author and screenwriter, member of the Algonquin Round Table. ... Woody Allen (born Allen Stewart Königsberg on December 1, 1935) is a three-time Academy Award-winning American film director, writer, actor, jazz musician, comedian, and playwright. ... Diane Keaton (born Diane Hall on January 5, 1946) is an Academy Award-winning American film actress, director and producer. ... Jessica Harper Jessica Harper (born October 10, 1949 in Chicago, Illinois) is an American actress and producer, as well as a singer and author of childrens music and books. ... James Tolkan (born June 20, 1931 in Calumet, Michigan) is an American character actor. ... Harold V. Goldstein (born December 10, 1923 in Schenectady, New York) known as Harold Gould, is an American actor who has spent his career in movies and television. ... Howard Vernon Howard Vernon (15 July 1914 - 25 July 1996) was a Swiss actor. ... George Hively (September 6, 1889 - March 2, 1950) was a film writer and film editor from 1917 to 1945. ... The current United Artists logo (a variant was used during the 1980s). ... Year 1975 (MCMLXXV) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... One of the A festivals in Europe. ... Year 1975 (MCMLXXV) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Woody Allen (born Allen Stewart Königsberg on December 1, 1935) is a three-time Academy Award-winning American film director, writer, actor, jazz musician, comedian, and playwright. ... Diane Keaton (born Diane Hall on January 5, 1946) is an Academy Award-winning American film actress, director and producer. ... 1867 edition of the satirical magazine Punch, a British satirical magazine, ground-breaking on popular literature satire. ... Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia or its émigrés, and to the Russian-language literature of several independent nations once a part of what was historically Russia or the Soviet Union. ... Sleeper (1973) is a futuristic science fiction comedy film, written by, directed by, and starring Woody Allen. ... Annie Hall is a 1977 romantic comedy film directed by Woody Allen from a script he co-wrote with Marshall Brickman. ... The philosopher Socrates about to take poison hemlock as ordered by the court. ... The Napoleonic Era is a period in the History of France and Europe. ...

Style

The dialogue and scenarios parody Russian novels, particularly those by Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, such as The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, The Gambler, The Idiot, and War and Peace. The use of Prokofiev for the soundtrack adds to the Russian flavor of the film. This includes a dialogue between Boris and his father conducted entirely by way of Dostoevsky titles. Prokofiev's "Troika" from the Lieutenant Kije Suite is featured prominently, for the film's opening and closing credits, and in selected scenes in the film when a "bouncy" theme is called for. In contemporary usage, a parody (or lampoon) is a work that imitates another work in order to ridicule, ironically comment on, or poke some affectionate fun at the work itself, the subject of the work, the author or fictional voice of the parody, or another subject. ... It has been suggested that Cultural depictions of Fyodor Dostoevsky be merged into this article or section. ... Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy(Lyof, Lyoff) (September 9 [O.S. August 28] 1828 – November 20 [O.S. November 7] 1910) (Russian: , IPA:  ), commonly referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer – novelist, essayist, dramatist and philosopher – as well as pacifist Christian anarchist and educational reformer. ... The Brothers Karamazov (Братья Карамазовы in Russian, ) is the last novel by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky, generally considered the culmination of his lifes work. ... For other uses, see Crime and Punishment (disambiguation). ... The Gambler is a novella by Fyodor Dostoyevsky about a youngish tutor in the employment of a formerly wealthy Russian civil servant. ... The Idiot is a novel written by the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky in 1869. ... War and Peace (Russian: Voyna i mir; in original orthography: Война и миръ) is a novel by Leo Tolstoy, first published from 1865 to 1869 in Russki Vestnik, which tells the story of Russian society during the Napoleonic Era. ... Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev (Russian: , Sergej Sergejevič Prokofijev; April 27 (April 151 O.S.), 1891–March 5, 1953) was a Russian and Soviet composer who mastered numerous musical genres and came to be admired as one of the greatest composers of the 20th century. ... Lieutenant Kije is a film so poor that it is remembered only because of its music, which was the first instance of Sergei Prokofievs new simplicity. ...

Some of the humour is straightforward; other jokes rely on the viewer's awareness of contemporary European cinema. For example, the final shot of Keaton is a reference to Ingmar Bergman's Persona, the sequence with the stone lions is a parody of Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin and the plotline involving the Countess, her jealous lover and his duel-gone-awry with Allen's character is an homage to Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night. Bergman's The Seventh Seal is quoted all throughout, and the Totentanz at the end is lifted entirely.   (IPA: in Swedish, but usually IPA: in English) (July 14, 1918 – July 30, 2007) was a Swedish film, stage, and opera director. ... Persona is a movie by Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, released in 1966, and featuring Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann. ... Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein (Russian: Сергей Михайлович Эйзенштейн, Latvian: Sergejs EizenÅ¡teins) (January 23, 1898 – February 11, 1948) was a revolutionary Soviet film director and film theorist noted in particular for his silent films Strike, Battleship Potemkin and Oktober. ... For the battleship, see Russian battleship Potemkin article Броненосец Потемкин (1925) (variously Bronenosec Potemkin, Battleship Potemkin, Battleship Potyomkin and The Battleship Potemkin) is a 1925 silent film directed by Sergei Eisenstein. ... Sommarnattens leende (Smiles of a Summer Night) is a 1955 film directed by Ingmar Bergman. ... The Seventh Seal (Swedish: Det sjunde inseglet) is an existential 1957 Swedish film directed by Ingmar Bergman about the journey of a medieval knight (Max von Sydow) across a plague-ridden landscape. ... This article is about La Dance Macabre, the late-medieval allegory. ...

Plot summary

Allen's character meets Death

When Napoleon advances to invade the Russian Empire during the Napoleonic wars, Boris Grushenko (Allen), a coward and pacifist scholar, is forced to enlist in the Russian Army, desperate and disappointed hearing the news that his cousin Sonja (Keaton) is to wed a herring merchant. He inadvertently captures a group of enemy soldiers, but to no avail, as the French army reaches Moscow immediately afterward. He returns and marries the recently-widowed Sonja (who really does not want to marry Boris, but promises him she will when she thinks he is about to be killed in a duel), a marriage filled with philosophical debates, and no money. Boris thinks that the French invasion of Moscow should put an end to the war. His narcissistic wife, angered that the invasion will interfere with their plans to start a family that year, conceives a plot to assassinate Napoleon at his quarters. Boris and Sonja debate the matter with some degree of philosophical double-talk, and Boris reluctantly goes along with it. Miraculously (or perhaps not), Sonja escapes arrest while Boris is not so lucky. Image File history File links Wallen1. ... Image File history File links Wallen1. ... For other uses, see Napoleon (disambiguation). ... Pacifist may mean: an advocate of pacifism. ... For other uses, see Moscow (disambiguation). ... This article is about narcissism as a word in common use. ... assassin, see Assassin (disambiguation) Jack Ruby assassinated Lee Harvey Oswald in a very public manner. ... Doublespeak is language deliberately constructed to disguise or distort its actual meaning, often resulting in a communication bypass. ...

Anachronisms

Allen's film is full of deliberate humorous anachronisms: Look up Anachronism in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

• In a brief interlude, Boris works as a struggling poet, reading from a poem he eventually wads up and throws out he says, "I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas," a quote lifted from T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." ("Too sentimental," Boris decides as he throws out the poem.)
• Allen retains his trademark glasses despite their anachronistic absurdity; at one point Boris says to Sonja after a diatribe filled with exasperation and self-loathing, "Do you think God wears glasses???" and she replies, "Not with those frames!"
• A vendor, complete with New York accent and attired is if he were at a ballpark, is selling "red hots" to spectators during a battle. One spectator apparently offers him a large-denomination currency, and he remarks, "Hey, you got anything smaller? I just started!"
• A black Drill Instructor puts Boris through his paces. "You LOVE Russia, don't you?" "Yes sir!" "I can't hear you!" "YES SIR!"
• In the era in which the film is set, the motion picture had not been invented yet, so the Russian Army stages a short "Hygiene Play" on the dangers of venereal disease, after which Boris "reviews" the 30-second play in the verbiage of a modern theater critic.
• Boris speaks to the audience: "There are some things worse than death. If you've ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman, I'm sure you know what I mean."

"Polish jokes" were popular in the early 1970s, wherein the Pole was presumed to be an idiot or to "get it wrong", as with blonde jokes in the current generation, "Sven and Ole" jokes in the upper midwest, etc. Allen included one of his own invention: The poor poet A poet is a person who writes poetry. ... Thomas Stearns Eliot (September 26, 1888 - January 4, 1965), was a major Modernist Anglo-American poet, dramatist, and literary critic. ... The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, a poem by T. S. Eliot, marked the start of his career as one of the twentieth centurys most influential poets. ... Look up Anachronism in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... This article discusses the term God in the context of monotheism and henotheism. ... “NY” redirects here. ... This article contains a trivia section. ... This does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... “Moving picture” redirects here. ... Sexually-transmitted infections (STIs), also known as sexually-transmitted diseases (STDs), are diseases that are commonly transmitted between partners through some form of sexual activity, most commonly vaginal intercourse, oral sex, or anal sex. ... Blonde jokes are a class of jokes based on a stereotype of blonde women (or rarely, blond men) as unintelligent, sexually promiscuous, or both. ...

• "My brother was killed in the line of duty; bayoneted to death by a Polish conscientious objector!"

It has been suggested that Conscientious objection throughout the world be merged into this article or section. ...

Famous Quotes

• "I was walking through the woods, thinking about Christ. If he was a carpenter, I wondered what he charged for bookshelves." – Boris
• "If it turns out that there IS a God, I don't think that he's evil. I think that the worst you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever." – Boris
• "I do believe that this is truly the best of all possible worlds." - Sonja "Well, it's certainly the most expensive." - Boris
• "We have to take our possessions and flee. I'm very good at that. I was the men's freestyle fleeing champion two years in a row." – Boris
• "But judgment of any system or a priori relation of phenomena exists in any rational or metaphysical or at least epistemological contradiction to an abstract and empirical concept, such as being, or to be, or to occur in the thing itself or of the thing itself." – Sonja, in one of the film's several mock-philosophical debates.

Box Office

The film grossed $20,123,742 in North America.[1]

External links

• Love and Death at the Internet Movie Database
• The New York Times review